Antenna Array Based on 3D-printed Plastic BoR Elements Coated with Conductive Paint

The body-of-revolution (BoR) Vivaldi arrays are usually all-metal, including both antenna elements and the antenna base. However, despite the robustness and low losses of the all-metal designs, they are often heavy and expensive. In this paper, we investigate 3D-printed, dual-polarized BoR antenna elements operating at 2±6 GHz. By 3D printing the antenna elements from plastic, we can make them less expensive, hollow, and thus lightweight. The elements are made conductive by painting them with silver paint. The performance of the antenna array is evaluated with simulations and measurements. Due to the relatively low conductivity of the paint, resistive losses of the array are higher than those of the all-metal counterparts. Nevertheless, the measured total efficiency of the array is still high, 95% at the highest, which confirms the applicability of the proposed manufacturing technique. Furthermore, we compare the proposed design to a previously published inverted BoR antenna array.